I am doing the Gap analysis of the SACS model with suction buckets and found that the gap analysis with thousands of nonlinear springs was leading to an exceptionally long analysis time, which requires 4 to 5 hours to finish the gap analysis. How can I speed up the Gap analysis?
The analysis time can depend on the type of machine you use. A large model with members, plates, and load cases also contributes to the analysis run time. You can separate the load cases and divide the Gap analysis to multiple runs with a few load cases per run and run all the cases in parallel using SACS Multi Run. This way, you can use all the CPU cores in your machines and may shorten the analysis time. However, you need to combine the analysis results for further post-processing. You can also reduce the number of plate elements on the bucket to reduce the analysis time.